


Can't Train a Moth, I Guess

by halotolerant



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Childhood Sweethearts, Codependency, Drug Dealing, Dysfunctional Family, First Time, Forbidden Love, Fucked Up, Hand Jobs, M/M, Porn Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 21:21:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I’m not better than you, but we’re not the same, either,” Robb said. </i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Jon pulled back, looked at him. “I’m more the same as you than anyone,” he said, croaking, cracking. And Robb knew what he meant to say, and hugged him again for it even though boys weren’t supposed to hug like this, they both knew that.</i></p><p> </p><p>The Starks run the deals on their housing estate. Jon hangs out at their house and stays in Robb's room. Asking questions is not encouraged, and maybe, neither of them want to know anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Train a Moth, I Guess

**Author's Note:**

> **Additional Warnings** : Half-sibling incest. Or is it? Quite aside from that, unhealthy relationship dynamics. 
> 
> **Further Notes** : For the Porn Battle prompt: A Song of Ice and Fire - George RR Martin, Jon Snow/Robb Stark - modern, bite, brother, hide, love

Questions weren’t encouraged, ever. Not about what went on, or where, in the estate, or what was in the bags that got moved about or where some of the stuff in the houses came from. 

And if you had any sense, you didn’t ask too much about where anyone’s Dad was. On the estate, things happened, men in the Group did what they liked and if Megan was married to Joe, that didn’t mean all her kids were his. You didn’t ask that kind of question, not twice, anyway. 

Jon was in the Stark house half the time, which might have been some kind of clue, except that Catelyn, Robb’s Mam, wouldn’t usually let any kid not her own – one way or another – have food at her table or help themselves to the biscuit tin or pile their football kit into the washing basket in the kid’s bathroom. The Stark house was twice as big as most on the estate – two semis knocked together – and people said the Stark kids lived like royalty, but Robb couldn’t see how. 

His Mam didn’t like Jon at all; Robb figured that out before he got to school age, even. Jon got the ends and crusts of things, and stuck with the flavours no one else liked, and if there was an errand to do she’d send him out in the rain before the rest of them. And if Jon’s was hers, how would that happen? And if Jon wasn’t hers (and he couldn’t be, anyway, not and be almost exactly Robb’s age), how come it wasn’t worse?

So Jon had to be someone else’s, right?

But in most ways, he was one of the Starks, all the same.

Jon was almost always around, all wide, sad eyes and quiet. He was quiet a lot, people would say something to him and he’d just stare back, silent and mouth pinched tight, quiet the way a fire can be quiet. 

Robb had seen Jon’s actual house only one time. They’d been nine, been coming back from school, and Jon had wanted to get something he’d borrowed off Robb and promised to return – Robb’s Mam had heard, would check, they both knew that. Even though Robb would happily have let Jon keep the trading cards or toys or whatever shitty thing it had been. 

Jon hadn’t wanted Robb to come in, but Robb had been curious. 

The house stank. There was a corridor from the front door, and Jon swore Robb to wait and bolted up the stairs, which had polystyrene cups and tied up plastic bags of litter just sat on them, whether going up or down wasn’t clear. The carpet underfoot was brown and a bit sticky, and had weird light patches that Robb thought, from the smell, might be cat piss. Edging forwards, Robb had peered round the door leading to the front room, and caught a glimpse of a body in an armchair, the TV screen and pale, thin light through the blinds behind it. A waft of smoke had hit him in the face and he’d drawn back, stifling himself, weeping with trying not to cough. 

He’d got, after that, why Jon put up with Catelyn and getting the burnt Yorkshire puddings. 

When Jon had come downstairs and seen him, they’d been this look on his face, dismay and betrayal and a rising blush. 

“You’re not better than me!” Jon had told him later at the Stark house, fiercely and as if he thought saying it might make it true. 

“Does that make any difference?” Robb had asked him back. 

Jon went quiet and burning, and Robb had come up closer. Jon pushed him away, so Robb pushed back, knowing Jon wouldn’t actually dare try and hurt him – whether because he was afraid of Catelyn, or Ned, or for some other reason, Robb wasn’t sure. Robb got his arms round Jon’s body and hugged him, tight, until he stopped struggling and was crying instead, shaking into Robb’s hold. 

 “I’m not better than you, but we’re not the same, either,” Robb said. 

Jon pulled back, looked at him. “I’m more the same as you than anyone,” he said, croaking, cracking. And Robb knew what he meant to say, and hugged him again for it even though boys weren’t supposed to hug like this, they both knew that. 

It had always felt that way. Like the two of them were in one world and everyone else in another with totally alien rules, and like all they could do was just help each other through the other world each day, until they could retreat into their own again. 

Ned, Robb’s Dad, treated Jon like a favourite pet, sometimes, when Catelyn wasn’t around. Other times, seeing him seemed to piss Dad off, and he’d send him out to get them all a takeaway or running a message for the Group. Dad didn’t trust telephones, not like his boys - that’s what he said. 

_His boys..._

Years ticked over and the Stark house got fuller. Sansa and Arya and Bran and Rickon, filling up the bedrooms even though the house was so big. Robb was too old for the younger boys, and couldn’t share with Sansa either. So he had his own room, and when Jon was over, Jon slept at the foot of his bed on an air mattress, or that was the theory anyway – Robb didn’t like it, would set up elaborate schemes so Jon would accidentally fall asleep next to him instead. Would sit up with him watching DVDs until they both drowsed, leaning into each other like collapsing balloons. 

Dad wanted Robb to help out more with the Group, inherit the leadership a little more, help with the runs and the handovers and meeting with the dealers. And he kept including Jon too, and Jon – who’d always been taller and broader than Robb, and always burned on the inside where Robb never could seem to find any angry fire of his own – did well and got his praise. 

Robb didn’t like that. And it wasn’t jealousy - or at least, not all jealousy anyhow. Sure, it got on his wick when people mixed him and Jon up, assumed Jon had to be Dad’s oldest son – carried on thinking it, often, it was clear, even if they were told otherwise. But mostly he didn’t want to work all his life in corners and darkness, one eye looking backwards. He didn’t want that for Jon, either. 

“I do what I’m told,” Jon said, simply, when they talked about it one day. “I have to. I owe your Dad everything. If he didn’t let me come over here, I’d be, probably, like... like my Mum.”

“But we’re not... We’re not, are we?” Robb was lying across his bed, playing with the duvet cover, in his boxers. Jon was naked. They’d been to the gym together that day, worked out, done the sauna, come home, showered in the en-suite Robb’s room had and then lain down like this, not bothering to towel off much first. They often did this - lying around to dry - always had, going back years. 

“What, you mean, brothers?” Jon sighed, rolling onto his front, and bit his bottom lip. “We couldn’t be.”

“Why not?” and Robb rolled closer in his turn, twisting round. Sometimes, times like this, they’d get hard, that was normal probably, they were teenagers after all and it didn’t take much. Sometimes, Robb would bring up some porn on his laptop and they’d lie side by side and nurse themselves through it, gasping and sweating in tandem, little mirrors of each other like they’d always been. 

Robb had learnt to time his breathing against Jon’s to make himself last, because Jon had better self-control. But if he looked at Jon too often, trying to get his rhythm, the sight could be overwhelming and cause him to lose it all at once.

“Wouldn’t it be wrong? Feel wrong, I mean?” Jon’s voice was dry, low. “We’d know. I think we’d know.”

They’d never done anything, not quite. But it didn’t feel new, or different, not so very much really, Jon saying out loud that they both knew they wanted to. 

Jon was hard. And as Robb watched, Jon reached out, slow, ragged movements, and started easing Robb’s boxers over his hips, exposing his dick, elastic smooth-scraping, cotton wash-soft. Robb was burning - aching and burning and scared - and Jon was rolling inwards again, bringing them almost together, lined up but not quite touching. It felt something for sure, felt like everything, but Robb didn’t know what _wrong_ would be, or _right_ , even, when it came to this. They used the same soap and Jon smelt like he did. 

“I feel like you’re part of me,” Robb said, words catching. “I feel like you’re the other half of what I am. What does that mean? What does that mean I know?” 

Jon didn’t say anything, just stared, his eyes black and glinting, holding Robb in his flame-bright gaze. Robb could feel his pulse thrumming through him, the wanting so intense he felt suddenly, horrifically close to crying. 

Robb’s dick twitched and Jon made a sound, not a very human one, and rolled in harder, pressing, biting at Robb’s neck, smashing them together. Robb grabbed onto him – his friend, his _friend_ – and bucked his hips frantically, rubbing against him. 

Jon spat in his hand, got it between them, stroked them together, holding Robb’s gaze the whole time, fierce and silent, as if daring Robb to say anything else – as if Robb could as he whined and moaned and collapsed into Jon’s side, liquid and trembling. 

“You’re all I have,” Jon told him, so low Robb didn’t even know if he was meant to hear it, and bit his neck again, once, sharp and firm.

They fell asleep together, that first time. Never again. They’d woken to Catelyn storming up the stairs the next morning to yell at Robb to get out of bed for his college, and Jon had startled and stumbled and panicked, and had to climb out of the window like they were in some fucking 1970s sitcom, and Robb had been aware all day, all the next night (touching it, pressing it, having to wank himself off twice at the thought) of the bite marks in his shoulders. 

After that, they were careful about putting towels down and keeping clean and Jon started using the air mattress, afterwards. Robb hadn’t realised how cold his bed could get. But if they were ever caught, like that, having done that...

So, yeah, there was a sense that something about it was wrong, but only that other people would think it was. It wasn’t like it felt bad or even difficult. Jon still came round most days, stayed in Robb’s room half the time, just like he always had, just like when they’d been young and made blanket forts and begged to be allowed to eat their dinners on the floor inside them. 

It was so easy to roll over and into each other, so easy for Robb to let Jon push his boxers down and take hold of him, so easy to bare his neck and make all the noises Jon seemed to like – hushed, trying to keep quiet, but just enough to make Jon tighten and bite down the way Robb had got addicted to like he was some junkie on the merchandise. 

They tried hand cream and face cream and massage oil, and Sansa actually complimented Robb on the moisturised state of his cuticles one morning at breakfast. Jon’s grip was hot and delicious but his thighs were better, and then one night his mouth, his pouting, lovely mouth sinking down Robb’s cock as those eyes watched him and Jon’s hand stayed at his throat, his thumb swiping over Robb’s pulse – _mine, mine, mine_. Robb’s eyes rolled back in his head and he spread his legs and gave himself every, any which way he could. 

“I am a little bit like him, though,” Jon said, one morning, as they were walking out, Robb to college, Jon to his job at the local Asda. “Aren’t I?”

Robb felt the heat rise up under his collar, and kept his eyes on the pavement. He was walking a little oddly; Jon had tried putting his fingers up inside him the night before, and Robb had liked it far too much to take things as slowly as perhaps he should have done. 

(Had panted and begged, and arched his back, and Jon had chuckled and _smiled_ , soft and deep, like he almost never did. Like he was amazed, like Robb amazed him...)

Robb bit his lip. “You’re like who?”

“Like Ned. When he touches Catelyn. When he... He used to visit us, sometimes, you know, and with my Mum, he... He likes to own people, doesn’t he?”

“You’re not like him.” Robb kicked a can out of the way, viciously. “And besides, he only does what he needs to for the Group, and besides, even if you are like him, of course you would be, he’s basically brought you up, same as me.”

“But you’re really not like him at all,” Jon said, slowly. 

“Fuck you,” Robb told him, and shoved him into the road so hard he stumbled and landed sat on his arse, winded. Robb stomped away, furious and terrified and still aching, aching inside from wanting his...his... from wanting _Jon_. 

They didn’t speak for three days. Robb lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, not even wanting to wank, just grey and sad and lonely, with strange electric chills of terror underneath because _what if, what if..._

“Grow a fucking pair of balls,” his Dad told him. “You’re worse than these girls on the films Sansa watches. What the hell’s the matter with you, eh?”

It was his way of being gentle. He tried his best.

“Dad...” Robb began, questioning, and then stopped. 

“Yeah? What is it?” 

Robb took a quick, deep breath. “Nothing.”

Jon came back at three in the morning, one night when Robb was up sitting on the sofa watching some bollocks documentary about house-selling. Jon smelt like alcohol and his shirt was torn and bloodstained – not his blood, Robb worked out, having panicked and stripped him and checked, checked, checked, too scared to be relieved or wonder if he had permission to do this anymore. 

“I’m fine, breathe,” Jon caught Robb’s wrists in his hands, held him firm. 

They stared at each other. Jon’s eyes were dark-rimmed and he even looked even more pale than usual, and he was staring, raking his gaze over Robb’s face like he’d been dreaming of nothing else. 

“Missed you, though,” Jon said. It was dark and quiet in the house but Dad might be up, on the phone to someone in China, or Bran might sneak down for a chocolate bar, and Robb absolutely couldn’t, mustn’t...

Jon fucked him up against the wall in the laundry room, the tiny room behind the kitchen, separated by the thinnest door from the main living space. Jon fucked him, lifting him up, taking the weight of his legs and grasping his arse to keep him moving and Robb clung on and cursed and came twice, once as Jon finally got inside him and then again, when Jon kept moving and moving and moving, rubbing him where he was so sensitive it hurt, but the best, sweetest burn. And all the time, Jon was biting on Robb’s neck and maybe crying a bit too, both of them gasping, struggling to breathe through mucus and kissing and bliss. They must have sounded like they were killing each other. 

“Dad wants me to go up north and take over some of the business there,” Jon said, after, when they were sitting in the kitchen, eating toast. The toast felt more perverse than anything else, somehow, on the old chipped china plates they’d known all their lives. 

Robb looked at him. Jon didn’t blink, didn’t amend his sentence either, just licked at some of the honey that had run down his fingers. Robb’s stomach dived; his dick was stirring, but he didn’t care. Jon was leaving. And if Jon left, Robb would be... 

“Don’t...” Robb said. He felt sick. Frozen inside. He couldn’t live the last three days again, he couldn’t even stand to think of it.

“Fuck, Robb, I didn’t mean... I don’t want to!” Jon moved, falling to his knees at Robb’s feet, catching up his hands, pressing his cheek against the inside of Robb’s thigh. Robb felt awful and embarrassed and perfect and powerful all together; and it made sense, a stupid weird sense in his head, Jon was his, after all, all his, always. 

Jon was still talking, seeming to struggle to keep his voice steady. “He wants me away from you, he pretty much said so. I think... I think he just means, he thinks I’m stopping you, holding you back... and maybe...”

Robb shook his hands free and reached out to cup Jon’s face, to draw him up towards him and kiss him, over and over, sweet honey and salt tears and everything wrong and everything right. 

“I need you.” Robb ran his hands through Jon’s hair. Like his own it was thick, curling and dark. “You’re the strongest part of me.”

Jon didn’t say anything for a while, just took back Robb’s hands and kissed them, slow and carefully, like he was memorising every contour; his own fingers were trembling a little. 

“It would have to be tonight,” Jon said, at last. “And it would have to be forever. Just go. Just run, get a train, go away and lose everything.”

Robb laced their fingers together. “Like we’ve ever had anything but each other.”

“And leave all your family behind?”

Robb looked at him, clear and steadfast. “You’re the only family I want.” 

And Jon made a sound like he’d been gut-punched, and leant in, and Robb kissed him and kissed him, and willed him not to try and ask any more questions. 


End file.
